Sound the retreat!

Yesterday I wrote about how I am convinced it’s a complete waste of time for the City Council to conduct a retreat for the sole purpose of conducting a retreat. And it should not be held in order for various council members to wax poetically about their thoughts on the city’s "vision" and/or to complain alarmingly and annoyingly about the city’s lack of same. One of the important points I failed to mention yesterday is the fact the city already has a vision statement. It’s called the Comprehensive Plan. Read it. It’s all there. Not only that, it’s blessed with fluidity, a important ingredient most "vision statements" sorely lack.

If the City Council is going to have a retreat it must do so to learn about and begin the steps to accomplish one or more (but "one" is usually the perfect number to handle for each retreat) long-range goals for the city. Yesterday, one idea I floated as an example to illustrate this concept was a retreat to learn about various possible options to realize City Manager Scott Sellers’s vision to make Kyle a destination city.

Today I want to bring up another example of what could make a City Council retreat both viable and valuable.

I have repeatedly and consistently bored the life out of anyone who had the patience to endure my rants on the subject of Budgeting for Outcomes. I am a big fan of Budgeting for Outcomes. (Here's an excellent story on this model and how it works.) I worked for the City of Dallas when it decided to transition from the type of budgeting model used today in Kyle to the Budgeting for Outcomes model. The difference between the two models, to put it simply, is the Kyle model is one only a CPA could love, while the Budgeting for Outcomes model is more of a contract between the City and its citizens that can be monitored and scored by the City Council.

In the Budgeting for Outcomes model, instead of simply a line-item expense, a service target is projected. In other words, you inform the council and, in the process, the public why these funds are being requested. Here’s an example lifted from the City Comptroller’s budget for a city which shall remain unnamed:

• Service target for FY 2016-17: Reduce the cost per payroll transaction to $1.22.
• Major budget items: Three Payroll Specialists were transferred to the Human Resources Department.

What this allows is simple: At the end of the fiscal year the council and the public can determine the worth of the budget item simply by determining whether that $1.22-per-transaction goal was reached.

Here’s another example lifted from the Animal Services Department budget:

• "Service target for FY2016-17: "Reduce loose animal service requests through increased community engagement, expanded education, and community partnerships.
• "Major Budget Items: The FY 2016-17 budget includes startup funding for 15 positions for targeted initiatives. The increased funding will be used to strengthen and engage targeted neighborhoods' sense of responsibility for animals and address existing animal issues. The staffing will include: 1 Manager, 2 Coordinator IIs, 4 Animal Service Officers, 2 Office Assistant IIs, 2 Crew Leaders, 1 Veterinarian, 1 Manager II, 1 Coordinator III and 1 Animal Keeper II."

Here’s an example of how it could work here in Kyle. Instead of a line item, like one that was a part of last year’s budget, to hire eight additional police officers, the budget would say something like:

• Service target for 2015-16: Reduce police response time by 13 percent.
• Major Budget Items: The FY 2015-16 budget includes the addition of eight additional police officers.

I think you see where I’m going here.

Successfully switching from one budget model to another one is not as simple a task as it may appear from my description here. That’s where the retreat can come in handy. If the city decided to make an idea like this the subject of a retreat, it should be able to offer presentations from officials who have already made the switch, it has to include step-by-step instructions on how to make the switch and it must give the council the opportunity to debate and decide on its budgetary approaches. For example, budgeting for outcomes, does not list budget items by departments but according to specific targets the city has agreed to concentrate on. Where I came from, these targets were referred to as "key focus areas" and it’s the responsibility of the City Council to determine what those key focus areas should be for its own municipality. Admittedly, this should not be that difficult of a chore because most communi8ties agree on what the five key focus areas should be for any municipal operation: 1. Public Safety; 2. Economic Vibrancy (and there is a key difference between "vibrancy," which takes into account the city’s already existing economic engines, and "development," which refers only to adding more cars to the existing train); 3. Clean, healthy environment; 4. Culture, Arts, Recreation and Education; and 5. Efficient, Effective and Economic Government. I don’t believe you could pinpoint anything a municipal government does that couldn’t be assigned to one of those key focus areas. You also have to learn and understand the concepts of "setting the price of government," "soliciting offers to deliver desired outcomes," "internally as well as externally negotiating performance agreements with chosen providers." But the point here is a retreat provides the perfect setting for the City Council to learn and understand Budgeting for Outcomes and then, if it decides it wants to move forward with this model, agreeing on its key focus areas.

Regardless of whether a retreat is scheduled to further Sellers’s destination city vision, to change the model of municipal budgeting or a completely different objective, any retreat scheduled by the city for the City Council must have some specific objective designed to enhance Kyle’s long-term future as its purpose. There’s nothing wrong with merely conceptualizing at a retreat — in fact, retreats provide a perfect setting for such idealistic visualizations — but it must be on a specific, concrete (i.e., not abstract) subject that’s decided and agreed upon before the retreat is actually scheduled.

That’s my two cents.